When I think of electronic faxing I always think of Microsoft Small Business Server’s built in faxing or Zeta Fax or GFI.

Zeta Fax & GFI Faxmaker work really well and integrate really well into Exchange but can cost a bit as user counts increase.So I had to setup Server2008R2 Fax Server recently which is FREE and heres how I did it.

1.Install the Fax Server Role.
2.Ensure Firewall Rules are correct.
3.Share Fax Printer out to relevant security group or domain\users
4.Add x86 driver to fax printer. Download driver HERE
5.Change the Fax Service “LOGON AS” from NETWORK SERVICE to LOCAL SYSTEM also tick “interact with desktop”

Now here is the bit that got me! When I logged on as an administrator xp x86 client I could connect to the fax server via the the fax console without any problems.But it kept saying connection errors when connecting with a standard user.So i tried adding permissions to the fax printer but that was not correct.

6.Open up Fax Service Manager, Right Click on Fax , Properties, Security add in relevant users , security group.

I recently installed a 2 node Hyper-V cluster soon to be a 3 node and all was working really well until I added a DPM 2010 Agent.When I was trying to do a live migration it would move 100% but fail to start. So if I shutdown the vm and move to another host and try and start it. It still wont start!!!!! 😦

It was also affecting SCVMM , I could not push templates to my cluster.

I was starting to panic at this stage and was thinking I needed to rebuild my cluster, but the fix was really simple and required a few steps.

1) Start Registry Editor.
2) Visit the following registry key: “HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\FsDepends”
3) Under the “FsDepends” key, change REG_DWORD value “Start” from “3” to “0”
4) Restart the computer

Another culprit was SOPHOS, I excluded cluster.exe , c:\clusterstorage and it still would fail. So I also excluded the volumes C:\Clusterstorage\volume1 , C:\Clusterstorage\volume2 etc.. and it all worked fine.

Also to remove any ISO images attached to any VM , Like exchange 2010SP1 iso, after the iso has been removed , go into cluster manager , right click on the virtual machine, click on more actions and refresh virtual machine configuration.

My live migration is working perfectly again.

I just got my wimax modem from Imagine and that wimax song is stuck in my head!

I am very impressed with how easy it was to setup. The setup wizard was so simple , colorful and quick.

My only complaint is that the motorolla router supplied doesnt have Wireless N

I have been using join me recently.It is so quick , simple and has a friendly interface.

Check it out https://join.me/

With Office 365 , Users will be able to use their Windows Active Directory accounts to sign in to their Microsoft Online Services like Exchange online, SharePoint Online and Lync Online.

I am currently testing this sign on method and I much prefer it to the BPOS SSO Tool.

I am not a fan of the current BPOS SSO method as it is not seemless where as Office 365 method is.

I first posted about broken vhd – avhd chains in December 2009, And since then I have helped many people throughout the world in recovering their data and made some friends along the way.

I have recovered data for people in france, germany , uk, australia, usa, brazil

A guy called Dave Loughner from Innovative Solutions in New York pointed out a great utility for recovering data from avhd & vhds.

It is Disk Digger and only cost $14.99, Best money you will ever spend if your really stuck. Dave tried about 30 recovery products before coming across Disk Digger.

As of writing this http://www.diskdigger.org is down but you can download it here

Also a point to note. The disk digger solution is absolutely the last resort as nothing is as good as merging all avhds and having a healthy server at the end.Using disk digger will get you back up to 50% of your data but not all.

A customers IIS in SBS2003 recently died and everything had to be re-installed as they used RWW all the time and were lost without it.So I went to add/remove programs and selected windows small business server and selected maintenance mode for server tools and then re-install , companyweb,networking & administration.

So when I ran the CEICW wizard it kept failing on firewall config and the error “0x80070003” was listed in the ceicw log.So upon some research on the web I was pointed in the direction of the companyweb identifier in iis.

TheHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\SmallBusinessServer\Intranet\companywebpath needs to match the number listed for the Companyweb Identifier in IIS.The default value is 4.And my reg key was correct.

So how do you find out what the identifier value is in IIS? You need to download and install IIS 6.0 Resource Kit and open up meta database explorer.

So within metadatabase explorer which is displayed in the image above expand w3svc and you should see a number of sites.In the problem i was having the companyweb identifier was not there! So I logged onto another SBS Server which was working fine and exported the 4 key. Then re-imported it into IIS.Once it is imported into IIS you need to edit id 1023 as per image to suit that of the current server.

Then do an IIS reset and re-run the CEICW wizard.
Once you have re-ran the wizard browse default website and expand the sites within default website. Right click onthe properties of remote. Then go to documents and add in “default.aspx”

Voila RWW is backup and running.

But what about OWA.

Strangely enough the Exchange and exchange mobile application pools were not present in IIS so as per my above mentioned method I exported these applicatin pools from a healthy server and then edited the exchange sites like OMA , Exchweb to use the correct application pools and all worked fine.

I have not seen anything on the web about how to fix a problem like this, So hopefully this will help people. Sean